September 14, 2005--Thirty-six percent (36%) of Americans say
that the federal government has done a good or excellent job
responding to Hurricane Katrina. The latest Rasmussen Reports survey
shows that another 20% say the government has done a fair job while
42% say poor.

While still fairly negative, that assessment reflects an
improvement over the past ten days. In our first survey
on the topic, just 28% said the federal government had responded in
a good or excellent manner.

While 36% say the federal government has done a good or an
excellent job, just 31% say the same about the response of state and
local governments. The Rasmussen Reports poll found that 33% view
the state and local response as fair. Thirty-four percent (34%) say
poor.

Thirty-nine percent (39%) of Americans say that President
Bush has done a good or an excellent job handling the Katrina
crisis. Twenty-eight percent (28%) say the same for New Orleans
Mayor Ray
Nagin.

[More Below]

Eighty-five percent
(85%) say that the "disaster in New Orleans and surrounding areas
[will] have a major impact on the U.S. economy. Consumer
confidence has fallen to its lowest level in more than two
years.

Sixty-seven percent
(67%) of Republicans now say the federal response to Katrina has
been good or excellent. That's up from 47% in the earlier
survey.

Among Democrats, just
18% say the federal government has done a good or an excellent job.
Sixty percent (60%) say poor.

There is less of a
partisan gap on the response of state and local governments.
Thirty-one percent (31%) of Republicans say the state and local
response was good or excellent. That view is shared by 30% of
Democrats. Thirty-nine percent (39%) of Republicans and 35% of
Democrats say the response was poor

Rasmussen Reports is an electronic publishing firm
specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of
public opinion polling information.

Rasmussen Reports was the nation's most accurate
polling firm during the Presidential election and the only one to
project both Bush and Kerry's vote total within half a percentage
point of the actual outcome.

During Election 2004, RasmussenReports.com was
also the top-ranked public opinion research site on the web. We had
twice as many visitors as our nearest competitor and nearly as many
as all competitors combined.

Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports,
has been an independent pollster for more than a decade.

The telephone survey of 622 Adults was conducted
by Rasmussen Reports September 12-13, 2005. The margin of
sampling error for the survey is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95%
level of confidence. 37% of survey respondents were Republican, 37%
Democrat, and 26% unaffiliated (see Methodology)